Joe Walsh, The Eagles' hard-living guitarist, once said: "You know, there's a philosopher who says, as you live your life, it appears to be anarchy and chaos, and random events, non-related events, smashing into each other and causing this situation or that situation, and then, this happens, and it's overwhelming, and it just looks like, what in the world is going on? And later, when you look back at it, it looks like a finely crafted novel."
In The Story Of The Republic of Ireland Women's Team, World Cup qualification is the triumphant final chapter. There's a lot of pages, and a lot of stories, that lead us to Amber Barrett's famous toe-poked winner in the play-off against Scotland.
The international women's team played their first game in 1973. In those early days, when Ireland lined out in front of tiny crowds to little fanfare, there could be no sense of what was to come. But those players' feats form the DNA that's helped to build Vera Pauw's current team.
After Ireland had qualified for this summer's World Cup, Pauw said: "We stand on the shoulders of the previous generations." And of course they do.
Earlier this week some ex-players gathered at the Davenport Hotel in Dublin to mark the FAI's 50th anniversary celebration of the formation of the women's team. Among them were Jackie McCarthy-O'Brien and her daughter Sam.
They are the first, and so far only, mother and daughter to represent the Republic of Ireland soccer team.
An infectiously charismatic pair, they bubbled with pride as they sat down to reflect on their achievements.
First, there is Jackie's journey.
Born in Birmingham to a Jamaican father and a Limerick mother, she was brought to Ireland when she was six months old.
It was the 1960s, a time when the country was predominantly Catholic and white.
A gifted sportsperson, Jackie would excel at soccer and rugby, going on to represent Ireland in both. Her debut for the Republic of Ireland against Northern Ireland stirred powerful emotions.
Former Republic of Ireland WNT internationals are to receive recognition for achievements that may have gone underappreciated in the past with a commemorative cap ahead of this summer's World Cup finals. pic.twitter.com/ltZv6o2uaF
— RTÉ Soccer (@RTEsoccer) March 30, 2023
"There were four black people living in Limerick and you got stared at," Jackie says.
"To stand in front of Amhrán na bhFiann, knowing that that jersey I was wearing, no one could ever take my Irish jersey away from me again.
"The colour of my skin didn't matter. Some of the girls had tears in their eyes but I had them for a completely different reason: it was my belonging. I am Irish. This jersey, everyone who's looking, it says who I am and where my heart is.
"I might look Jamaican on the outside but I am Irish in the middle. That's my abiding memory. Just singing Amhrán na bhFiann, note for note and word for word. I learned it at school. It made me feel like I belonged in this country.
"When you wear that jersey... I always felt 10-foot taller. You were wearing the uniform that not everybody gets to wear. I'd be walking down the street in Limerick like [puffs her chest out]. You had to have that swagger. That's a belief in the jersey, that's taking pride in what you are wearing. That should give you as much pride as anything else because not everybody gets to do it.
"I'm proud as hell of doing it. And I'm proud of this one [Sam]. My proudest moment, I went to watch her scoring four goals in a match. I was like, 'if you don't get me down off this cloud, I'll never get home!'"
Sam, of course, was steeped in sport from the get-go, travelling to watch her mam train and play, always around the Ireland camp, desperate for a chance to pull on the green jersey.
"It is nice having people coming up to you and saying, 'you were there in the beginning'."
Those four goals Jackie still beams about came in a European Under-18 Championships group game against Turkey back in 2000 - Sam's finest moment.
"We had to beat Turkey 4-0, no qualms about it, to reach the second round," she recalls. "Noel King was our manager at the time. He came around the room and said, 'How many are you going to score? How many are you going to score?' He came to me and I said, 'I'm going to score all four of them'.
"We went out and in the first 60 seconds, we went 1-0 down. I said, 'right, have at it, throw your head at it, throw the kitchen sink at it.' I went and scored the four goals and we went to the next round.
"I'd been up in Dublin every weekend, for every training session with Mam since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. For me it was like, 'this moment has finally come for me, I get to do what I've watched Olivia O'Toole, Linda Gorman, Sue Hayden all those players who'd gone before'. Now it was my time to shine. To say it was a privileged feeling was an understatement."
Last October's play-off win against the Scots at Hampden Park was an almost overwhelming experience for both of them.
"It was nerve-wracking," remembers Jackie. "Past players, I suppose we feel like mammies even though we wouldn't know all the girls but it is like... 'please do it, please do it, all our hopes, all our dreams, just make this one'. It was euphoria.
"You'd swear you had actually played the match. Limerick is sports mad. I went to the market the following week and it must have taken me three hours to get around five minutes of a walk.
"'What did you think, what did you think?'. It was just phenomenal. You'd people coming up congratulating you and it was like, 'I done nothing!'. They were saying, 'no, no, no - I remember watching you when you were 11, I remember one goal you scored'.
"The whole of the city and the whole of Ireland is going to buy into this. It's going back to Italia 90, where we're all in the pubs, the buses stop, they're beeping the hooters. I think it's going to be like that when they go off to Australia because it's just unreal the buzz that's going around with it.
"It is nice having people coming up to you and saying, 'you were there in the beginning'."
Sam interjects: "My first call was Olivia O'Toole. I didn't get through to her, rang her the next day and she was hoarse. She said, 'Sam I can't speak to you, I'm hoarse!'. The feeling... it was absolutely brilliant. It came full circle. For that moment, it was worth everything."
Jackie and Sam were speaking less than a week after the FAI publicly condemned "vile and horrific racist abuse" aimed at members of the Republic of Ireland Under-15s boys squad.
Sadly, they've both gone through similar scenarios.
"Look, there is racism in Ireland," says Jackie. "There's no point in sugarcoating it, there is racism. And I will say it to you that nowadays, it's actual racism because back when I was growing up, it was ignorance. You stuck out like a sore thumb.
"I've got a grandson that I don't want to go through what I went through as a young one. I want him to integrate and be as part of the Irish society as he can.
"We all need to talk. We all need to mix. I turn around and I say in the media, 'Ireland is racist,' I'm not talking about the whole of Ireland, but there's people in Ireland that are racist.
"It will change, and I think sport is the way to change it. More people of colour and visibility."
"I remember one time Robert, my son, got called names by students in Limerick, our future. They called him names and he came home distressed. I went down and I knocked on their door and I said, 'there he is, now say it to his face, instead of roaring it across the street. He's as Irish as you, now say it to a six-year-old'.
"I said, 'you're an absolute disgrace, you are our future, 16/17 going to college and this is what you have to say to a little kid?' When you bring it down to that, it humanises it.
"It will change, and I think sport is the way to change it. More people of colour and visibility.
"The sad thing about it is you can go anywhere in the world and you'll find an Irish pub, we have gone everywhere. So we should be equally as welcoming in this country. And it will happen.
"They're people that were born here, they're as Irish as bacon and cabbage. It will happen and I have confidence it will happen."
